I was a confused at first wondering what they meant by “compassion”. It dawned on me that this person thinks that it’s good for homeless people to be off the streets, but bad to actually help them; “off the streets” means in jail, went elsewhere, or dead, realistically. I say “realistically” because people like this seem to think that if you treat people with survival issues harsher it will motivate them to bootstrap themselves out of that situation, as if the vast majority weren’t already highly motivated and making things harsher wouldn’t make it harder for them to get out. (And also as if the concept of “bootstrap”, as it is normally used, wasn’t a cruel joke.)
This is because they’re thinking about what’s good for the city, not for homeless people, and they object to making a city a place which life on the streets is survivable because they believe it would attract homeless people from elsewhere, demotivate some of them to get off the streets, and maybe even make some lazy people choose to be homeless on purpose. From that perspective, “compassion” as being used by people who care about the homeless probably sounds Orwellian.
That’s a rather shitty way of prioritizing things. I mean, it sort of works, but in the worst way possible, and definitely not for the reasons which they use to justify their attitude.